Isle car dealers besieged by calls about air bag flaw

Dealerships across Oahu reported getting scores of calls Tuesday from concerned car owners wondering whether they needed to bring in their vehicles for repairs, a day after federal regulators issued a warning that a bevy of cars in humid areas such as Hawaii could be at risk for defective, potentially dangerous air bags.

"I can’t even count. The phones are going crazy," Tony Group Autoplex call operator Jojo Bocobo said Tuesday of owner inquiries about the airbags in their Nissans and Hondas.

More than a dozen of those two brands’ models from 2001 to 2007 were flagged by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday as potentially at risk due to faulty inflaters in the air bags made by Takata Corp.

Other car brands flagged by the NHTSA are Toyota, Mazda, BMW and General Motors, Subaru, Chrysler, Ford and Mitsu­bi­shi.

Currently the earliest appointments to bring affected vehicles into the Wai­pahu Autoplex are about two weeks away, Bocobo said.

Meanwhile, many consumers in Hawaii and abroad were left Tuesday grasping for answers. A link from the NHTSA website that lets owners look up their car by vehicle identification number did not respond all day (safercar.gov/vin). Calls to an operator on the agency’s hotline — 888-327-4236 — were routinely put on hold.

Daniel Gluck, a civil rights lawyer from Hono­lulu, said his To­yota dealership’s designated repair shop, Motor Imports To­yota, had said there was a 90-day backlog for the parts to replace the air bag on his 2003 Corolla.

Gluck, who has two children, said the shop had not yet suggested deactivating his air bag, but he welcomed the option.

"I’m surprised that there’s such a long wait for the parts, given the stated urgency of the repair," he said. "To be honest, it’s probably fine, but I’d certainly like to get it fixed."

Gluck’s dealership was overwhelmed with calls Tuesday.

"It has been super busy — started yesterday, nonstop, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.," said Janelle Castro, who works in the dealership’s customer care center. "I’m going to say that if we take in 1,000 calls a day, maybe 900 of them are recalls."

BMW of Honolulu also reported an influx of airbag-related inquiries. "We had a higher volume of calls today than normal. We are trying to get through this recall as quickly as possible," said Mike Tetsu­tani, service and parts director at the Hono­lulu dealership.

David J. Friedman, deputy administrator at the NHTSA, said that it decided to issue the warning Monday after receiving test results from Takata on returned air bags in recent days, and out of concern that owners were not getting their cars fixed.

A faulty propellant inside air bags is unstable and can explode, sending metal shards flying into the cabin. The defect has been linked to at least three deaths and more than 100 injuries.

In all, more than 14 million vehicles from 11 automakers have been recalled for the defect, most in the past two years.

Officials with Toyota Hawaii have recommended that those with potentially affected cars not allow anyone to sit in the front passenger seat until the air bags are fixed.

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The New York Times contributed to this report.